


Learning to Drown

by Smaragdina



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 20:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It is a good place lose himself in the sound of his breathing and the rhythmic splash and the silence all around." Every Serkonin child learns how to swim, and Corvo keeps the practice up throughout his life. Drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning to Drown

Summer in Serkonos is warm and bright and golden, and the sand is hot on his bare feet as he runs down to the water with half a dozen of the other village boys. They hit the surf, keep running, dive under like cormorants. The sea is a constant in the Isles, and in the height of summer in the south it is warm enough to not be instantly deadly; every Serkonin child knows how to swim.

Corvo is still very young. He is still clumsy in the water, still learning – instinct says to pinwheel his arms and make himself stiff, to tuck himself tight as a nut in its shell (and therefore sink like a stone). He learns quickly, however. He must. This may be his last summer on the beach; his parents have been speaking of adult things and words like _money_ and _apprenticeship_ , and he is a child but not a _child_. But that will be for later.

For now, there is only the sound of laughter and splashing, and the triumph of cutting through the waves. When he surfaces and rolls on his back the saltwater stings in his eyes and blurs everything around him – the other boys become shapes as sleek as seals, the water glitters, and the shells of the crabs on shore (white, golden, deepest purple) become shining and bright and precious as jewels.

*****

This is not proper.

“You should at least,” he tells her, despairing, “have a cap for your hair.”

Jessamine grins at him. The water has slicked her hair down so that it drapes and sticks to the lines of her neck and collar and lovely white shoulders, and Corvo finds himself staring. He’s beginning to regret this idea. “If I fall into the water I won’t have a cap,” she points out. “I’ll still have my _shoes_ on.”

 “I’m not teaching you how to float while you’re wearing shoes.”

“Exactly.” She looks so incredibly pleased with herself. “This was your idea.”

“It’s a good idea,” he mumbles. He’s trying to convince himself (because it _is_ , because it would be so easy for anyone to push her off the tower into the sea, and _the sea_ is not a thing that Corvo can stab). Jessamine laughs.

She leans back and Corvo moves to catch her – and this is another problem, because he’s not sure where to put his hands.

She’s _still laughing_.

“I can’t believe you didn’t learn this when you were a girl,” he mutters. And his cheeks are _burning_.

“Not proper.”

_“Gah.”_

Corvo settles for placing his hands on her back. Not quite her waist. One hand on her back, one hand steadying between her shoulder blades – that’s proper enough, isn’t it? He swallows and makes his voice matter-of-fact. “Lean back,” Corvo murmurs (listening to the waves roll around them, sparing a glance to the side to make sure that the guards posted on either side of the bay are still there). “Back, all the way, until your eyebrows get wet –”

Jessamine’s dark hair is floating all around her. It’s lovely.

“Good?” she asks, and her voice is a bit shaky.

“Good. Perfect. Now, relax. You’re tense. Put your arms out.”

Jessamine is a good student but an impatient one. Corvo has patience for both of them – he talks her through it, steadily, adjusting his touch by breaths until it is only a hand on her back to hold her up in the water, then two fingers. She keeps her dark eyes on his face, wide and unblinking and trusting. He tells her not to hold her breath; he reminds himself not to hold his.

At long, long last, Corvo removes his hand without telling her. And Jessamine floats on her own, perfectly still, at peace –

“AUGH!”

And then she _realizes_ that he’s not there, and she does exactly what he expects her to do – flails, jackknives in and goes under. Corvo catches her and ends up grabbing her bathing clothes instead of her and she twists in his grip, grabs his shoulders, shoves him under with her.

Sound is muted underwater. It takes him a moment to realize that what he hears is _laughing_.

*****

There are no guards on the water. There is no sword at his side. He doesn’t need it. He can stop time, possess a fish and swim away; he doesn’t need to fear assassins, now, not anymore.

Not when he’s the only target.

The water in the harbor just down a ways from the Hound Pits is slick, on top, with a thin coat of slime. Corvo decides not to think about it. He cuts through it, steadily. Back and forth. Swimming is good training; good for getting him used to his body again, building his strength back after Coldridge. The burn in his shoulders is steadier and sweeter than the burn from climbing and it’s a good place to…

Not to _think_. Not precisely. He doesn’t like thinking, because he starts thinking about the _future_ and all the things he can’t control.

It is a good place lose himself in the sound of his breathing and the rhythmic splash and the silence all around.

(If he looks down, he has a funny feeling that he’ll see black eyes watching him from the bottom of the harbor. Corvo keeps his eyes closed).

He hasn’t done any serious swimming since childhood and it’s hard to get back into it. Hard to find the right rhythm again. He finds, oddly, that if he breaths it destroys it – that if he lifts or turns his head it throws the lines of his body all off, disrupts things. Makes it difficult. He keeps his head down.

He has found, lately, that putting his head down and going through the motions of what needs to be done is easier than stopping for breath.

It’s only air, after all.

He’s gone without worse.


End file.
